Hands On with UltraMon: A Must-Have for Multiple Displays

Multiple monitors can help you be more productive. They also just look cooler on your desk. I was skeptical about making the move to a dual-monitor setup, but when I did it, I couldn't believe I hadn't done it...

Multiple monitors can help you be more productive. They also just look cooler on your desk. I was skeptical about making the move to a dual-monitor setup, but when I did it, I couldn't believe I hadn't done it sooner.

When got the second monitor, I needed an easy way to manage both at the same time, even set different images as the desktops on each display. I also wanted the ability to easily expand my windows across multiple monitors, and easily enable or disable one of the displays. I was surprised to find out that I couldn't do any of that in Windows, but some searching turned up a utility that would do it all: UltraMon.

I've been using UltraMon for years now. It's always been an excellent utility to manage multiple monitors, but new revisions have added more features that in all honesty, should either be in Windows already, or be options in your video card's drivers. Some video cards include features like display mirroring and spanning desktops across both displays, but none of them are quite as "smart" as UltraMon. For one thing, UltraMon adds two buttons to the title bar of each window, one that allows you to to span your window across multiple displays and one that allows you to, with move an entire window from one window to another with a single click. If the window is maximized, it will stay maximized when it moves, and vice versa.

UltraMon gives you one interface from which to control both of your monitors, unlike many video drivers, which have a control panel for each display. From that interface, you can set different resolutions for each of your displays, move the displays around each other to match the physical orientation of your displays, or add even more displays to the group. You can enable or disable monitors from here, and you can access common features like wallpaper options and screensaver choices. However, UltraMon installs a taskbar widget that's far more convenient for those things.

With one right-click on the UltraMon taskbar widget, you can go straight to screensaver options and configure the screensaver you like, and choose whether you'd like the screensaver to run independently on both displays, run spanned across displays, or choose different screensavers for each display. With another click, you can choose the wallpaper options, and--this is an important feature--set one image as the wallpaper for one of your displays, and a different image for another, or stretch a single image across multiple displays. UltraMon also installs with a "smart taskbar" which, unlike some other app, reflects the position of the windows on your display. If you have a window open on your second display, the taskbar button for it is on the taskbar at the bottom of the second display. Windows open on the first display stay in the first display's taskbar, and they all minimize to the taskbar on their respective screens. Other applications shove all of your open windows onto the taskbar on your primary display, if it extends the taskbar at all.

Perhaps UltraMon's best features is the simple, effective way it handles display profiles and mirroring. At the office, I have a laptop that's connected to an external display. Several of my colleagues simply close their laptops and use the external display alone, but since I have dual displays at home, I had to have them at work as well. By installing UltraMon, I can have two displays with two different screen resolutions (and wallpapers) and when I have to give a presentation, I can undock my laptop, take it to the conference room, and with one click on the UltraMon taskbar widget, I can set my displays to mirror my laptop display on the projector. Alternatively, if I'm taking my laptop to a conference room to collaborate, or if I'm headed to a café to work, the UltraMon widget allows me to disable or enable my secondary or primary display with ease. Disable the secondary display, undock, shut the laptop, and go. When I return, I can re-enable it just as easily. UltraMon can also remember display profiles for all of those situations and I can switch to them when I need to. UltraMon will even remember the placement of my desktop icons, in case I full-screen an application or a game that changes my screen resolution and messes up the order of my icons.

UltraMon isn't free, but it's essential for multi-monitor setups. Admittedly there have to be other applications that handle all of these features, and many video card drivers are adding these types of features. Unfortunately, many video card manufacturers require massive downloads to install their software, and their apps are difficult to use and slow to load. Windows Vista supports some of UltraMon's features, but not many. UltraMon is lightweight at just under 3MB, supports Windows 2000 and XP (there is a beta for Vista), and is free to try, $39.95 for a single user license.